Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Fred_Evans]

Hello all- and you King Sparta!! I havent been here for about 2 years and am glad to " see" you again.

Can someone please point me to a standard "classification " list of music genres??

I am starting to use my music again and would like to compile playlists for different moods

regards from south africa

[KingSparta]

Can someone please point me to a standard "classification " list of music genres??

there is none

however

Id3v1 List:

http://lame.sourceforge.net/doc/html/id3.html

[RobOK]

In my experience you have to take about 2/3 "standard categories" that people use and 1/3 use what works for you.  For example, if you have a vast Classical library you might break that down into many categories or add sub fields.

I have a lot of "Alternative" (which a lot of is probably pretty mainstream!), but I break that into Alternative Hard, Alternative Mellow and Alternative.  It works for me.

I put all Christmas songs into Christmas genre regardless of the actual music.

Another good source of genre's is to look up specific groups or albums on www.allmusic.com

[MrHaugen]

I allways look up the artist on allmusic.com and READ about the genre.
After many hours of studying I can say I have a pretty good overview of the genres.

I found it best to divide the genre into genre and sub genre.

My genres are

Genre:

Blues, Country & Western, Electronica, Hip Hop & Rap, Jazz, Others (comedy, mix etc...), Pop, R&B, Reggae, Rock, Techno & Dance, World

Sub Genre:

Acid Jazz, Alternative Hip Hop, Alternative Metal, Alternative Rock, Ambient, Big Beat, Black Metal, Blues, Britpop, Celebrity Pop, Chillout, Classic Jazz, Classic Rock, Club/Dance, Comedy, Comedy Rock, Country Pop, Dance Pop, Dancehall, Disco, DJ Mix, DownTempo, Easy Listening, Electro-Funk, Electropop, EuroDance, Folk-Rock, Folklore, Funk, Funk-Rock, G-Funk, Glam Rock, Goa Trance, Goth Rock/Metal, Grunge, Hard Rock, Hardcore Hip Hop, Hardcore Rap, Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, Hip Hop Soul, Hit Collections, House, Indie Dance, Indie Rock, Industrial, Industrial Metal, Industrial Rap Metal, Industrial Rock, Mainstream R&B, Metal, Metalcore, Miami Bass, Minneapolis Sound, Modern Rock, Neo Soul, New Jack Swing, Norwegian Hip Hop, Nu Metal, Oldschool Hip Hip, Oldschool R&B, Pop Rock, Post-Rock, Post-Grunge, Prog Rock, Prog Trance, Punk Rock, R&B Pop, R&B Soul, Rap, Rapcore, Reggae, Rockabilly, Soft Rock, Soul, Soundtracks, Southern Rock, Stoner Rock, Tech House, Techno, Trance, Tribal, Trip Hop, Vocal Pop.

Rock is a huge part of my sub genre. 34 of 86 sub genre is part of rock.
With 13 000 tracks, this was a pretty extensive job. But I simply LOVE it now.
I can get auto generated smartlists with the desired genre/subgenre mixed with BPM and intensity.
And with all my tracks rated as well, my life of music is just sweeet

The most important thing of genre is not to place the artist "correct". It is for you to know the genre
(a little), and place the artists/albums/songs acording to where you feel it belongs.
After all it's your library.

There are no right answers when it comes to genres

[hit_ny]

Which genre would a VA belong to if it contained more than 1 genre/subgenre ?

[MrHaugen]

I placed them under genre: Others
You can call it VA if you like.

Under that I have sub genres like "Hit Collections" etc.

But remember to use the field "Album Artist" and name it "Alsolute Music" or similar.
The album get the title "Absolute Music 5" etc... Then you get full control.

If not, you will be stuck with enormous amounts of artists.

[hit_ny]

So you would give a generic genre & AA to a VA that contained various genres rather than specific genres/sub-genres for each track in that VA ?

[MrHaugen]

No. I would just give it a Album Artist name so you can manage it better. Like my "Hit Collections".
If you want to give the VA tracks individual genre you are welcome to try.
But it will be incredible time consuming!

I'we been playing with this idea to make a plugin for MC wich looks up style/mood description for each song. Not genre in particular. It's a little to hard for the normal user to know enough about it to make a acurate selection i think.
Would be somewhat similar to KingSparta's lyric finder, wich will upload a pre-defined sett of style and moods you select for a song. And then downloads that information with a title - artist search.

With style/moods i'm thinking of something like: slow, fast, medium speed, nachspiel (after party), funky, intense, happy etc, etc...

Would make it easy to get tracks that sound alike, and fit your mood and situation.

Just a though for now. Need to get a static IP adress for my server and help from a fiend with the programing

[hit_ny]

Do sites have style/mood info on a track basis ?

Was under the impression that it was on an album basis and that too maybe 5 or more different styles/moods to describe an album.

I agree doing a VA's tracks on individual genre basis is quite difficult. The best way i know of at the moment is to use album scores to limit which albums might crop up if i wanted better chances to enjoy what i liked. Then all that remains is to decide what genre one is in the mood for.

I've also found its easier to get better random track selections if one sticks to say the albums of an artist or releases from the label the artist is from but this too has its limitaitons. Sticking to best albums + genre is best i got till now.

[MrHaugen]

Do sites have style/mood info on a track basis ?

I don't think any sites does. No. That's why I would like to make one.
Would be the greatest tool ever if you ask me. If enough ppl would use it.

Was under the impression that it was on an album basis and that too maybe 5 or more different styles/moods to describe an album.

There have been some solutions for styles and moods on albums. But as I was informed, all of the sites have removed the ability to get that information automaticly with plugins or 3-rd party applications. So we are back at 0.

When it comes to Album scores I have been planning to do that as well. Great when it comes to picking out random full albums you like. I have also been thinking about rating each artist. The potential for that is even bigger I think.

[hit_ny]

I have also been thinking about rating each artist. The potential for that is even bigger I think.

How would one go about doing this ?

I thought avging the track scores on an artist basis would work here.

Take 2 examples an artist that has done a cpl of tracks that i rate at 4 stars and another that has done 20 tracks but only a quarter of them are 4 stars. Going by the above methid of artist rating, the artist with 2 tracks has a higher rating than the other with 10 times as many !!!

It dawned on that most of the time, i'm more interested in finding an artists/labels/series best work, ie the album name.

[MrHaugen]

How would one go about doing this ?

I would add a custom field in the library called Artist Rating. 1-5.
Then I would give the Artist a rating that I personally think it deserves.
Not base upon average track rating. Because I try to give a objective rating to the tracks, wether I like them or not. As long as they are popular.... If you catch my drift.
That's why it would be wrong to take a average from the track rating. In my case.
There will also be a problem if you add a album from the same artist later, that sux. Then the score should also be changed.

I'm doing it the same way for albums I think.

[runemail]

I really like the genre - subgenre layout in allmusic. But even if I have tagged my music I never look at or serch for any genre. I only use tags to get all relevant hits when I do a search.

But giving each song a genre, rating, etc. must be a huge task.

I think the best way would be to apply/grab genres, sub-genres, moods/styles from AMG combined with users tags and popularity from Last.Fm.
That would make it easy for everyone to navigate around in their music.

I only rate standout tracks 4 or sometimes 5 so they are easy to pick when needed for playlists or parties. Rating artists seems strange to me, but I guess too much is better than not enough tagging

[hit_ny]

Not base upon average track rating. Because I try to give a objective rating to the tracks, wether I like them or not.  As long as they are popular.... If you catch my drift.
That's why it would be wrong to take a average from the track rating. In my case

No chance of being objective here, rating is subjective, so i thought avging that might be slightly more objective. But agree this is not the way to go about it. In the end i wondered artist rating, what is  it good for ?

i keep coming back to album scores, which are the top albums by said artist/genre/label etc. (that i like).

It appears there are 2 schools of thought here
- The radio station
Last.fm , amg, ratings based on sales maybe appropriate if you play music in a public venue and are looking for better acceptance. It's slightly more objective since you avg across a wider user base. You can say this track/album is better because it sold x copies, was top of the charts for x long. This is what major radio stations use  in addition to aggressive marketing of new stuff.

- The personal DJ
Mostly edgy, unknown, indie, tasteful depending on the DJ. No dependance on mainstream market data cept maybe pushing stuff from thier own label or affils. Music here is bit more unique, harder to mix randomly than the usual mainstream stuff. Find that whole albums work better than mixing random tracks.

In the end if MC is just for personal consumption, all that realy matters is how much you like anything.

[MrHaugen]

But giving each song a genre, rating, etc. must be a huge task.

It's a huge task for sure. But I would never tag each track with genre. It's just too much.

As to the artist rating. I'll explain.
I said that I often give higher rating to tracks for artist I don't like because I know the have good songs when you like that artist. I might even grow into liking them. Thats why I want to rate the artists. That will give me more control of what artists I listen to, and are able to drop those high track ratings on artists I don't like.

Or another example would be to pick artists with rating 1 or 2. That means that they are a crappy band. And then I pick every track from those artists, with 5 star rating. That gives me a one hit wonder playlists of sorts.

No chance of being objective here, rating is subjective, so i thought avging that might be slightly more objective. But agree this is not the way to go about it. In the end i wondered artist rating, what is  it good for ?

It's hard to be objective. But I try my best.
As for the Artist rating. Look up for an answer